3 ms·

I'm using Smolin's terminology because he was defending Seers in his book, is Markopoulos' ex-husband and colleague, and a central piece at the Perimeter. From

I'm using Smolin's terminology because he was defending Seers in his book, is Markopoulos' ex-husband and colleague, and a central piece at the Perimeter. From his book, cited above (the whole chapter is very much worth reading): "Master craftspeople and seers come to science for different reasons. Master craftspeople go into science because, for the most part, they have discovered in school that they’re good at it. They are usually the best students in their math and physics classes from junior high school all the way up to graduate school, where they finally meet their peers. They have always been able to solve math problems faster and more accurately than their classmates, so problem solving is what they tend to value in other scientists. Seers are very different. They are dreamers. They go into science because they have questions about the nature of existence that their schoolbooks don’t answer. If they weren’t scientists, they might be artists or writers or they might end up in divinity school. It is only to be expected that members of these two groups misunderstand and mistrust each other. [...] Of course, some people are mixtures of both. No one makes it through graduate school who is not highly competent on the technical side. But the majority of theoretical physicists I know fall into one or the other group."

joaorico 10y ago
Smolin actually singles out Markopoulou as one of the great modern Seers (in the same chapter): "It is easy to list those whose thinking has led to papers and even books addressing foundational issues: Roger Penrose is perhaps the best known to the public, but one can name many others including John Baez, Louis Crane, Bryce DeWitt, Fay Dowker, Christopher Isham, Fotini Markopoulou, Carlo Rovelli, Rafael Sorkin, and Gerard ’t Hooft."
- theoh 10y ago
  I see Nathan Myhrvold (who published a lavish technical cookbook) isn't on that list. It shouldn't be a big deal when someone decides to step back from working on abstract algebraic models of highly constrained physical systems (Feynman's "creativity in a straightjacket") to working on the more human task of design. Design is fascinating, but it's all about putting yourself in someone else's shoes. What does the user want? Why should the user have to do X at this point? It's different and it exercises different parts of the mind from theoretical physics. It's a lot more natural for humans. Cryptographic protocol design is IMO the closest thing in CS to product/service design in the corporate/engineering world. There you have formal proofs and formal breaches in security, but everything hinges on implicatures and difficult-to-formalise expectations of what the protocol is intended to achieve. The architect Zaha Hadid apparently studied math at university before switching to architecture. She's a controversial figure (also a woman) and her architectural achievements were absolutely from an imaginative rather than a mechanical part of her personality. As for "Seers and Craftspeople", if you replace those words with "Visionaries" and "Mechanics", you're in danger of reproducing the already widespread prejudices in Western society about intelligence and human worth. It starts to sound like normative vs positive, prescriptive vs descriptive, which is, like all binaries, a bit divisive.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
As someone who clearly belongs to the Seers category, went to Physics school, then ended up in a different field, that quote struck a chord. I'll have to read that book.

joaorico 10y ago

Smolin actually singles out Markopoulou as one of the great modern Seers (in the same chapter): "It is easy to list those whose thinking has led to papers and even books addressing foundational issues: Roger Penrose is perhaps the best known to the public, but one can name many others including John Baez, Louis Crane, Bryce DeWitt, Fay Dowker, Christopher Isham, Fotini Markopoulou, Carlo Rovelli, Rafael Sorkin, and Gerard ’t Hooft."

theoh 10y ago
I see Nathan Myhrvold (who published a lavish technical cookbook) isn't on that list. It shouldn't be a big deal when someone decides to step back from working on abstract algebraic models of highly constrained physical systems (Feynman's "creativity in a straightjacket") to working on the more human task of design. Design is fascinating, but it's all about putting yourself in someone else's shoes. What does the user want? Why should the user have to do X at this point? It's different and it exercises different parts of the mind from theoretical physics. It's a lot more natural for humans. Cryptographic protocol design is IMO the closest thing in CS to product/service design in the corporate/engineering world. There you have formal proofs and formal breaches in security, but everything hinges on implicatures and difficult-to-formalise expectations of what the protocol is intended to achieve. The architect Zaha Hadid apparently studied math at university before switching to architecture. She's a controversial figure (also a woman) and her architectural achievements were absolutely from an imaginative rather than a mechanical part of her personality. As for "Seers and Craftspeople", if you replace those words with "Visionaries" and "Mechanics", you're in danger of reproducing the already widespread prejudices in Western society about intelligence and human worth. It starts to sound like normative vs positive, prescriptive vs descriptive, which is, like all binaries, a bit divisive.

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

As someone who clearly belongs to the Seers category, went to Physics school, then ended up in a different field, that quote struck a chord. I'll have to read that book.